Large-scale Energy Projects and Food Security

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. In following the hon. Member for York Outer (Mr Charters), I will start by putting the other side of the argument that he was trying to develop about compatibility or incompatibility with solar installations. I use the word “installations” deliberately, because the word “farms” conjures up images of warm, cuddly, nice things that we all like to see in our countryside, rather than these brutalist fields of glass, metal and plastic that take away the natural landscape as well as food production. I have no issue with farmers who wish, on a very modest scale, to take 10, 20 or perhaps even 50 acres of totally unproductive land in order to diversify into an energy project, be that ground-mounted solar or a wind turbine, or whatever it might be, but the clue is in the debate title: this is about the large-scale solar installations that are being proposed.

Rosefield in my constituency started off as a 2,100-acre proposal; the developers are trying to trim the edges a bit, but there is still a reality that it will take away food-producing land. The National Farmers Union’s own statistics show that we are losing land from cultivation at a rate of 100,000 acres per year. I understand that the proponents of ground-mounted solar want to talk about very low fractions of a percentage today, but if we look at the number of applications coming through in my constituency and, I dare say, in many other hon. Members’ constituencies, the cumulative impact will be considerable. Take Rosefield alone: we have already seen two battery storage proposals on prime agricultural land right next door, as well as National Grid having to come along and say, “Ah! If all these proposals go ahead, we are going to have to rebuild East Claydon substation to take in the power that these facilities are allegedly going to be generating.” And guess what, Sir Mark? That is on yet another farm in that neighbourhood, taking away more food-producing land.

[Anna Gelderd (South East Cornwall) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way, and the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Llinos Medi) for securing the debate.

Cornwall, and South East Cornwall in particular, has the potential to lead the way in the renewable energy revolution and in relation to our food security, offering significant opportunities. Does the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) agree that it is essential to have a balanced approach that respects our farming and fishing communities, which play a vital role both locally and in national food security and in relation to the environment, on which they depend? We must seize this opportunity to address Cornwall’s economic challenges and ensure that we do not damage ecosystems, as they play such an important role. A partnership approach would enable these essential areas across the UK, and Cornwall in particular, to succeed.

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention and congratulate her on squeezing her speech into it. I would argue that, yes, a balanced approach is right and important, but this goes to the nub of the argument that ground-mounted solar is actually incredibly inefficient. When we have something in scarce supply—land, in this country—we need to go for the technologies that are going to deliver.

I have used these important statistics in Westminster Hall before and I will make my penultimate point with them today. We need 2,000 acres of solar panels to produce enough power for 50,000 homes on current usage; for a small modular reactor, we need the space of two football pitches and it will produce enough power for a million homes. A single wind turbine will produce enough power for 16,000 homes and probably needs only half the size of the room we are in right now.

This debate is about efficiency and proper land use. It is about getting to renewable energy production, but it is also about using technology that does not destroy our countryside and that does not fundamentally take away our other core source of national security, which is food production.

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[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Llinos Medi)—I hope I have pronounced the constituency name correctly—on securing this important debate, and Members from across the House, including my own colleagues, on their speeches. I support the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for York Outer (Mr Luke Charters) and for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes). I should also declare an interest: I have a number of family members, although somewhat distant, who are farmers.

My experience of solar, including from visiting solar farms near Reading, is entirely positive. I want to describe a visit I went on with the former Conservative Minister, the former Member for Hexham. We visited a large solar farm next to the M4 motorway that is on a reclaimed site—a site that had been landfill and before that gravel pits, but which has been re-adopted as grassland with ground-mounted solar. The benefits for the economy are clearly enormous. The landscape imposition of the site is minimal, as it is on reclaimed land next to a motorway.

I would like to hear more talk about how land that has been reclaimed, or has low landscape value, can be used. I understand that in much of the country there are large areas that fall into that category. Certainly, my own county of Berkshire has the M4 motorway running through it, and we have other areas of lower landscape value, as well as some of very high landscape value. I would like to see a sensible approach, protecting very valuable landscapes.

My visit to the solar farm was entirely positive. The site is financed by pension contributions; it provides a long-term source of energy, as well as a long-term source of income to pension savers, which is also important, and general benefits to the economy. It was a huge win-win for everybody. While I was there, the former Member for Hexham—who has a strong rural background —pointed out to me the ability of sites to be built in the UK so that livestock can graze under the solar panels. His own experience in the north-east of England was exactly that. I commend that point to the House.

I will add a few related points. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) pointed out the pressure on farming incomes. It is worth remembering that many farmers are seeking to diversify. There is a strong tradition of farmers renting out disused barns and workshops to small enterprises. There is a place for farm diversity, and it is important to think about that aspect of farming. We should be commending farmers for their entrepreneurship and ability to be adaptable, as well as supporting them, as we do in many other ways.

It is also important to remember that there are large farm buildings in our landscapes that have had relatively light treatment in planning terms. I am thinking of the hon. Member for—I apologise, I cannot quite remember his constituency—

[Greg Smith]

Mid Buckinghamshire.

[Matt Rodda]

Mid Buckinghamshire—fantastic. He is obviously a Thames valley MP, like me. There are some large farm buildings in our part of the south-east that already—from the point of view of landscape—have a very large visual impact. Some ground-mounted solar arrays are low; they can be screened if they are looked at from ground level. The site I visited had trees on one side—obviously not shading it—so that a passer-by on a footpath would not necessarily know it was there. We need to bear in mind the importance of balancing different issues while looking at this topic, of working together in a cross-party way, and of supporting the move to a sustainable future and a sustainable economy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She is absolutely right to say that, in order for us to meet our 2030 ambitions, we will need a whole range of different options. Community energy is a critical part of that, helping to deliver energy security and lower bills. Crucially, it also gives communities a stake in the energy future. That is why one of Great British Energy’s five objectives is to support the delivery of a local power plan, which puts local communities, combined authorities, local authorities and others in the driving seat in restructuring our energy economy. I am happy to meet my hon. Friend and others to discuss this issue further.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

Contrary to what one of the Ministers said earlier, the last Government brought about one of the largest revivals in nuclear energy in 70 years in order to provide clean electricity generation, yet we hear precious little from the new Government on their plans for nuclear; we hear only their plans for inefficient technology that will destroy the countryside. Why are they so anti-nuclear, and when are they going to get on with delivering nuclear energy?

[Michael Shanks]

I will give credit to the Conservative Government on one thing: they were very good at making grand announcements. On delivery, however, they were much poorer. Looking at a whole range of things—carbon capture being a very good example—they had lots of warm words but no delivery whatsoever. On nuclear, they had lots of warm words but no delivery whatsoever. In 14 years, how many nuclear power stations were built under the Conservative party? None. We will get on with doing the work.

Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower

Greg Smith Excerpts

Friday 26th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I add my congratulations to you on your new role, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick), and equally, I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches in this debate. In particular, I join the hon. Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) in paying tribute to Craig Mackinlay, who was a superb Member of this House. As he makes his transition from being the bionic MP to being the bionic peer, I think I speak for the whole House in wishing him well.

On today’s subject matter, I want to be clear from the outset that we absolutely have to decarbonise and we absolutely have to defossilise. The challenge laid down to our great innovators and scientific minds is enormous, and those great minds are rising to the challenge, from electricity generation to the fuels of the future. But that is also why I am so frustrated by an approach to cleaner energy and cleaner fuel from Government that always seems to favour the first, but not necessarily the best or most sustainable, solutions for the future.

Let me start with the controversial topic of solar. Since I was first elected in 2019,

the threat of large-scale solar developments has caused significant concern for many of my constituents. Across my constituency and parts of my former constituency now represented by others, field after field and farm after farm have already been blanketed by solar panels, to the detriment of the surrounding community, food security, nature and landscape. Food security is national security, yet before any of us who were elected on 4 July had even sworn in, the new Energy Secretary had signed off 6,000 acres of solar installation, later admitting in his statement a week after that a land use strategy was yet to come. We simply cannot have this language of community consent when the decisions that are taken walk all over the views of the communities so badly affected. Smaller, stand-alone solar is less impactful, quicker and easier to install, does not risk damaging the local infrastructure, and provides an additional, reliable source of income for many struggling farmers.

It is not just the panels that consume vast amounts of our countryside. The infrastructure needed to carry the electricity generated through to the grid swallows up yet more. It is no coincidence that adjacent to the proposed Rosefield site in my constituency a battery storage facility is being put forward. In the ultimate manifestation of the tail wagging the dog, National Grid has come along and proposed another huge land take essentially to rebuild the east Claydon substation next door.

Let that be a warning to any community where solar is coming: it does not end with the panels. Solar has its place, but that is on our rooftops and not our fields. Research by the wonderful charity, Campaign to Protect Rural England, found that there is potential for 117 GW of renewable energy to be generated from rooftops and other existing developed spaces in England. We should be prioritising that, and not losing our agricultural land.

My solution has always been to propose nuclear as the option, and to look at small modular reactors. I have given this statistic in the House before, but I will do so again: we need around 2,000 acres of solar panels to generate enough electricity—on current usage and before everybody has two Teslas on the drive—for 50,000 homes. By contrast, just two football pitches are required for a small modular reactor that will power, again on current usage, 1 million homes. I fail to see how anyone can look at those two competing land uses and choose solar over the small modular reactor. It is simply not a good use of land to turn our farms into solar.

Let me move to another clean energy that I am particularly passionate about, and away from electricity generation to the future of fuel. The United Kingdom is already an international powerhouse in the field of synthetic and sustainable fuel, with companies such as Zero Petroleum innovating right here, and international companies such as P1 Fuels making huge investments in bringing the manufacturing of fossil-free fuel to the United Kingdom. It is a straightforward fact that there are 1.4 billion internal combustion engine vehicles on the road worldwide, and that is before we start counting agricultural and construction vehicles, planes, ships and so on. They are simply not all going to convert to electric, as some argue that they should. Green hydrogen mixed with atmospheric carbon capture makes a wholly man-made liquid hydrocarbon that works in everything we already have. After more than a century’s refinement on those engines, and this clean fuel will just work in them.

[Mr Holden]

On the point about synthetic fuels, is it also the case that for several types of vehicle, such as incredibly heavy vehicles or those that need to travel incredibly long distances, there is no battery option, and synthetic fuel as an alternative is exactly where we need to go?

[Greg Smith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Certainly for heavier application vehicles, batteries just would not work. I saw a diagram at one of these companies that shows that if we were to try to make a 747 fly on batteries, the batteries would be bigger than the plane. Therefore, that is not a viable option going forward. Synthetic fuels are entirely man-made. There is no need to grow food to burn or recycle old chip fat, or for raw earth mineral mining for batteries; it is just clean synthetics. My ask to the Government, as they look to a clean energy future—that is the right ambition; where we disagree is on how we get there—is that they truly embrace synthetic fuels and make them mainstream. They need to be scaled, and in order to be scaled, manufacturers need confidence that the Government will permit that.

An important point to finish on is that the carbon at tailpipe when these fuels are burned is the same volume that is then recaptured to make the next lot of fuel. They are net zero. It is one volume of carbon in a perpetual circle. I congratulate the Minister on his appointment, and ask him to take the message back to the Department that we need to embrace synthetic fuels as part of the clean energy revolution that he claims at the Dispatch Box to want to see.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call Torcuil Crichton to make his maiden speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Smith]

I accept that the figure at the moment is 1%, but the volume of solar applications coming forward literally every week in my constituency alone means that the cumulative impact will be a hit to food security. I gently ask the Minister to look at the projected numbers for the future, not what we already have.

[Michael Shanks]

rose—

Clean Energy Superpower Mission

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

I was delighted to visit the port of Milford Haven during the election campaign. There is an interesting issue here: the £1.8 billion investment that this Government are making in our ports will hopefully allow us to invest in floating offshore wind at more ports than the last Government were able to. I cannot make promises about particular ports from the Dispatch Box, but this is so important, because if we are to get the jobs here, we must invest in our port infrastructure.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

The Secretary of State referred multiple times to community consent, yet the 6,000 acres of solar installation in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) had no community consent. That sends shivers down the spine of my constituents in and around the villages known as the Claydons, who are looking down the barrel of a 2,100-acre solar installation called Rosefield. That is on top of a proposed battery storage plant next door, and on top of the National Grid wanting to build a brand-new substation to take the thing in; it is the tail wagging the dog. What will change to make community consent a reality?

[Edward Miliband]

What the hon. Gentleman wants for nationally significant projects is community veto.

[Greg Smith]

indicated assent.

[Edward Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman nods his head. I will be honest with him: we are not going to give community veto. The last Government did not give it either. There are nationally significant projects that the Government have to make decisions on. Obviously, we have to take into account the views of local communities, but the whole point of decision making on the nationally significant infrastructure programme is that we look at the needs of the nation as well. That is why community benefit is important. If we ask local communities to host clean energy infrastructure, sometimes they will not want it, or sometimes a minority will not want it—I am not making presumptions in this case—and then we should ensure that those communities benefit from it.